VA Loses 1.8 Million-Record Hard-Drive

The Department of Veterans Affairs is warning 1.8 million veterans and doctors that their personal data might be on an external hard drive missing from an Alabama hospital. Although an employee at the VA Medical Center in Birmingham reported the incident Jan. 22, the VA did not reveal the loss until 11 days later. The department then said that personal information on up to 48,000 veterans might have been compromised. It now estimates that the hard drive could have contained personal date, including Social Security numbers, for some 535,000 patients and billing information on 1.3 doctors nationwide. The VA said it has no reason to suspect misuse of the lost data, but it offered a year of free credit monitoring for those whose data is compromised. The loss follows a theft of a VA laptop computer and disks last year containing personal data on 26.5 million veterans.